Vancouver-based combo Black Mountain, the brainchild of Stephen McBean,
worked at the edge of psychedelic-rock and hard-rock, like many of their
contemporaries who fell in love with
Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin,
but Black Mountain do it in a friendlier mold.

The album Black Mountain (Jagjaguwar, 2005), featuring harmonies a` la
Jefferson Airplane with female singer Amber Webber, relied on huge guitar riffs,
notably for Druganaut (their debut single), Modern Music and No Satisfaction
(with echoes of the Velvet Underground).
Mostly they sounded like a more tuneful version of Electric Wizard,
adopting a retro sound without being too progressive.
The main experiments appeared in the eight-minute psychodrama Heart of Snow and the electronica-tinged No Hits.
It was well packaged, but a bit predictable.

McBean also played in the Pink Mountaintops, that debuted with
The Pink Mountaintops (Jagjaguwar, 2004), basically a concept about sex.
Axis Of Evol (Jagjaguwar, 2006) delved into psychedelic folk with
the nine-minute power-ballad Slaves and several brief litanies; but
McBean excelled at the numbers that more closely recalled Black Mountain,
such as
Cold Criminals (yet another variation on the Velvet Underground),
New Drug Queens,
Lord Let Us Shine.

Black Mountain's
In the Future (Jagjaguwar, 2008)
includes the 17-minute progressive suite
Bright Lights, but it's the eight-minute Tyrants that packs
the most intense atmosphere. The shorter songs pale in comparison with these
two titans, and it's not the hard-rock of Stormy High that survives
but the ghostly Night Walks.
Less derivative than the debut, this is
the album that justifies the hype.

The Pink Mountaintops' third album
Outside Love (Jagjaguwar, 2009) was the humblest of the trio, timidly
exploring the dissonant pop of Execution while exploiting
Outside Love, a duet with Jesse Sykes, but mostly relying on
singalongs such as Holiday and Vampire.

Black Mountain's Amber Webber and Joshua Wells launched the side-project
Lightning Dust with
Lightning Dust (2007) and
Infinite Light (2009)
to play romantic country-pop ballads (Never Seen and Waiting on the Sun to Rise on the latter).